Words as Spells, Nets as Time
The Temporal Technology of Ritual
“We can define rituals as symbolic techniques of making oneself at home in the world. They transform being-in-the-world into a being-at-home. They turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time what a home is to space”
– Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals
In the first use of this net, participants were led in a ritual opening, inviting them to remember the words of those who came before us and pin to the net words that shaped their worldview. Net shape takes inspiration from Carlo Rovelli’s time cones.
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One way to destroy the grid is to change what the grid is made of. To reveal the grid the system does not want us to see. Instead of abstract lines marching to an impossible infinite growth, the grid could be made of tethers to people, narratives, ideas. The ones who came before us, the ones with us now, and the ones who will come after us.
In the words of Jose Ortega, “I am I and my circumstance; and, if I do not save it, I do not save myself.” There is no I in the vacuum of space, there is no me without the people next to me, before me and after me.
